To all you guys I was talking to earlier, saying that microsoft is just "moving in a new direction". That may be true, but just look at what's happening to them overall, as a company. They used to be the top dog, no question, everyone else was a distant second. Now they're second, third, and fourth in almost every category. The only thing they really have left where they're the leader, is what they've always had, the desktop OS. If you look at all their other business ventures, (excluding xbox) they've pretty much all been failures. The stuff they buy out or buy into just never takes off. Zune, IE, buying myspace, Microsoft TV, the list just goes on and on. The way I see it, just about everything they try to change, or get into, doesn't work out. So I really wouldn't be surprised at all to find that people really don't like this, and aren't really going to participate in it, in the way that Microsoft wants.

And it all goes back to their whole idea of doing business. "The customer doesn't matter, and we don't care what they want", is their mantra. Always has been. Look at what they tried to pull with the new xbox, but they got shouted down. Their mantra has been much more along the lines of "Try and force or corral them into a position that benefits us". They've proven that over and over and over. And that's just not going to fly anymore. Others are stepping up to the plate who are much more customer friendly, and have a much better attitude towards them in general.﻿

And the tinfoil hat is a bad analogy here, cause everyone is already wearing it. We all already know the spying and monitoring is going on, per Snowden's big reveal. So I'm only talking about what's actually happening, not what some paranoid people think is happening.

Thank you for the pfSense in a VM guide. I will give it a try. Since I have never used a VM do you happen to know if there are disadvantages in system's snappiness and to what extend? Pure newbie on this one, thank you.

It's possible to route all your traffic through a VM running pfSense. It may not be practical, easy or worth the effort...but it's possible.

You would first need to know a lot of those network concepts. That probably wouldn't take very long. pfSense seems to do everything from the basic NAT router up to very sophisticated VLANs and things really complicated networks that require a lot of power and flexibility would only need to do.

Then you would need to learn pfSense inside-and-out. Before even attempting to virtualize it. Being FreeBSD doesn't necessarily help as it works just different enough from Linux etc. that something not working isn't necessarily going to be a google search away.

Then finally the virtual machine part. My personal preference has always been VirtualBox but I haven't got a grasp yet on how much if at all Oracle has screwed with it since taking over Sun. I find VirtualBox does everything required and does it well enough any enterprise grade equivalent isn't really necessary.

Once that is done it's the "local loop back" portion of windows which should be relatively easy when compared to the other things. Would probably take months to learn all this. It would for me anyway.

I should probably mention I haven't actually done this loop-back-pfsense-vm thing myself. Just been reading it and wanting to do it for multiple years now.

To put aside all the "Windows 10 is spying on you" hysteria (hate to break it to everyone but Chrome has telemetry, iOS, Android, and pretty much everything. Heck, even Steam has telemetry for the gamers out there.) to step in for those who are part of the Insider Preview Program.

It's possible to route all your traffic through a VM running pfSense. It may not be practical, easy or worth the effort...but it's possible.

You would first need to know a lot of those network concepts. That probably wouldn't take very long. pfSense seems to do everything from the basic NAT router up to very sophisticated VLANs and things really complicated networks that require a lot of power and flexibility would only need to do.

Then you would need to learn pfSense inside-and-out. Before even attempting to virtualize it. Being FreeBSD doesn't necessarily help as it works just different enough from Linux etc. that something not working isn't necessarily going to be a google search away.

Then finally the virtual machine part. My personal preference has always been VirtualBox but I haven't got a grasp yet on how much if at all Oracle has screwed with it since taking over Sun. I find VirtualBox does everything required and does it well enough any enterprise grade equivalent isn't really necessary.

Once that is done it's the "local loop back" portion of windows which should be relatively easy when compared to the other things. Would probably take months to learn all this. It would for me anyway.

I should probably mention I haven't actually done this loop-back-pfsense-vm thing myself. Just been reading it and wanting to do it for multiple years now.

Thank you for expressing very nicely the "real-deal". I understand you, I believe you and I agree with you completely. IF setting up all these things would be as easy as installing Linux Mint, for example, then the majority (of those interested) would give it a try, at least! Personally, I have never tried any of these things, so I am not talking from personal, first-hand, experience now, but I do believe you.

What I am going to do is that I will start trying out / testing some of the tools from the list I have posted above, post #6250. Today already I will try W10 Privacy. I am dual booting between 10 Pro and 10 Pro Technical Preview. My TP installation is "virgin", absolutely no modification / tweaking, and I am using an MS account on it, since I use it as an Insider. No software is installed on this installation, besides CCleaner and HWiNFO64. I do not mind at all re-installing it at any point in time, in case something will go wrong, and of course I'll create a Restore point before applying anything.

I do not mind, and actually I really like, trying new things but...this pfSense installation and setting sounds too painful... Perhaps later I might dedicate a few months to it. For now the best steps I consider logic is a) trying a couple of those tools, b) perhaps purchasing a better modem-router for my system. One that will accept dd-wrt.

To all you guys I was talking to earlier, saying that microsoft is just "moving in a new direction". That may be true, but just look at what's happening to them overall, as a company. They used to be the top dog, no question, everyone else was a distant second. Now they're second, third, and fourth in almost every category. The only thing they really have left where they're the leader, is what they've always had, the desktop OS. If you look at all their other business ventures, (excluding xbox) they've pretty much all been failures. The stuff they buy out or buy into just never takes off. Zune, IE, buying myspace, Microsoft TV, the list just goes on and on. The way I see it, just about everything they try to change, or get into, doesn't work out. So I really wouldn't be surprised at all to find that people really don't like this, and aren't really going to participate in it, in the way that Microsoft wants.

And it all goes back to their whole idea of doing business. "The customer doesn't matter, and we don't care what they want", is their mantra. Always has been. Look at what they tried to pull with the new xbox, but they got shouted down. Their mantra has been much more along the lines of "Try and force or corral them into a position that benefits us". They've proven that over and over and over. And that's just not going to fly anymore. Others are stepping up to the plate who are much more customer friendly, and have a much better attitude towards them in general.﻿

And the tinfoil hat is a bad analogy here, cause everyone is already wearing it. We all already know the spying and monitoring is going on, per Snowden's big reveal. So I'm only talking about what's actually happening, not what some paranoid people think is happening.

that's absolutely true, they have always been the "we dont care what the customer wants" company. But now they've done a 180, basically trying to out-Apple Apple, using Apple's own playbook. And they seem to be winning at it.

I see a company that got way too full of its own success and lost ground to the new kids on the block (Apple, Google, etc) and now they've completely changed course under new management. They've evolved. And so far, I'd say it's a bad bet to bet against them. I'd even go so far as to predict that 3 years from now, Windows Mobile will be a major player rivaling Google & Apple.